When a structured meeting is planned, an agenda is typically defined in order to identify meeting topics in an organized manner. Prior to the meeting, the agenda informs prospective meeting attendees as to the topics of discussion, so that a decision whether to attend can be made and any necessary preparations can be undertaken. During the meeting, the agenda may serve to focus the discussions and can assist the meeting facilitator in adhering to time constraints. After the meeting, the agenda can serve as a record of topics that were discussed. A meeting that has no agenda lacks one of the primary tools for maintaining control of a meeting. This is true regardless of whether meeting attendees are located in the same room or collaborating from different locations.
An agenda typically lists the proposed topics of discussion, often referred to as agenda items, in outline form. The description of each listed agenda item may include such details as the names of the discussion facilitator(s), the objective(s) of the discussion, any documents or exhibits to be referenced during the discussion, the time allocated to the discussion, etc. Agendas have heretofore been written or printed on paper or stored as electronic documents that could be distributed among and displayed by suitably configured computing devices. Prior art agendas were often created using common software tools, such as word-processors, spreadsheets, multimedia presentation software. However, prior to the present invention, agendas did not provide any meeting management functionality beyond the information they displayed.
Accordingly, there remains a need for a computer-implemented agenda tool that actively manages a meeting by responding to status changes, scheduling follow-ups, and providing ready access collateral content. In the context of on-line meetings, there is a further need for an active agenda tool that provides automatically updated agenda data when possible to all connected attendees.